


Wings of the Dawn

by MagpieMinx (CardinalFox)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Artistic Use of Biblical Scripture, F/M, Fallen Angel Bucky (lightly implied), Guardian Angel AU, Guardian Angel Steve, Guardian Angel Steve intervenes and is injured, Implied near attack by Fallen Angel Bucky, Other, Speaking in Tongues (kind of), That it's that's the whole fic, You help mend him
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-24 08:56:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17701337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CardinalFox/pseuds/MagpieMinx
Summary: Sometimes, even holy relationships are inverted. You protect your guardian angel, immature heavenspawn, and mend his gentle, broken wings  --@ctrlcreepOr'Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life' Psalm 23:6





	Wings of the Dawn

He trembles when you touch him, skin shivering, feathers rustling, the glow of Glory around his golden head.  His face is turned up to yours, blue eyes like fractured starlight, pink lips parted. He looks at you like he is afraid of you, and like he has never seen anything so wondrous.

**_Fearfully and wonderfully made, Your works are wonderful, I know that full well._ **

The words slip from his lips like a prayer in a language you’ve never heard, like every language you’ve ever heard, crackling on his tongue like flame.  You don’t know how to respond to this kind of awe and reverence, not when he is so beautiful. Light pulses under his skin, and in the breathlessness of the moment, you almost forget that his wings are broken.

“Let me help,” you say in ordinary words, kneeling beside him on the sidewalk pavement.  It’s cold and hard under your knees, a contrast to how his skin feels too thin under your palms, insubstantial, like it can barely contain him.  You lean closer to him, the wrong angle of his wings disturbing you. They’re bending too much in the wrong places, but then he half-closes his eyes and moans, leans helplessly into you, face flushed like he’s drunk.

**_Your hand will guide me, Your right hand will hold me fast._ **

You wonder if he’s praying to God, wonder why he’s not asking for help or healing.  You wonder if angels heal at the same rate that humans do, or if the process is faster somehow.  Aren’t angels beings of spirit? It seems strange that he would have broken wings, or maybe it’s symbolic of something else?  You shake your head to clear your thoughts so you can focus on the task at hand, shuffling around his side so you’re closer to his back.

You run your hand along what would be a humerus bone if it were an arm, and he shudders again and makes a soft, pained noise.  It’s the bone that might be a radial bone, or maybe an ulna, you can’t remember which is which from your high school anatomy class, that’s the broken one.  You hesitate to touch it, rest your hand on his arm again, marveling at the bulging bicep as you wrap your fingers around it, his skin surprisingly cool under your hands.  He looks over his shoulder at you, luminous, splintered eyes suddenly pleading.

“Help me,” he says, his voice hoarse, the syllables heavy and stilted, like human speech doesn’t come naturally to him.  Your mouth has fallen open while he was looking at you and you snap it shut, your teeth coming together with a click, and you nod.

“I can realign the bone?” you say, and he hesitates, then nods, looking afraid.  You can’t tell whether he’s afraid of you or if he’s afraid of how much it will probably hurt when you align the broken bones of his wings.  You decide not to ask, just push yourself up onto your feet so that you can pull on his wing with both hands. You can’t imagine why he would be afraid of you, you saw him fight-

Saw him fight what?  A menacing shadow, a body radiating darkness, a broken halo of black around its head, midnight wings half open as it bore down on you.  It was only a split second that you saw it from the corner of your eye before a white-gold bolt intercepted it, collided with it, and then vanished.  You wonder if it was a demon, or maybe a fallen angel, wonder if the two are different as you lay hands on his broken right wing and prepare yourself to pull it into its correct shape.  He whimpers when your fingers close around his feathers, soft as down and white as snow, a sheen of gold reflecting off them.

“Ready?” you ask, and count three of your heartbeats before he nods.  You take a deep breath, prepare yourself to cause this beautiful creature pain, and then you pull.

He makes a strangled, animal sound when you do it, but then there’s a flash of Glorious light, golden and blinding.  You stumble backwards, tears streaming down your face, pressing your palms into your eyes. Something warns you not to open your eyes, not to take your hands away, some innate sense of the beautiful wrongness and terrible rightness of what you’re doing.

You’re startled when you feel cool hands pulling gently at your wrists, tugging your hands away from your eyes.  You’re the one shaking now, trembling with fear that you’ve somehow been punished for helping this angel who is somehow as familiar to you as your hands, your feet.

**_You hem me in behind and before, and You lay Your hand upon me._ **

The words don’t just snap into your ears, they somehow dance before your closed eyes, sigils of living light flaring in the dark and fading out as fast as falling stars.  There’s no time to wonder about them before you feel a gentle kiss on each of your eyelids, coolness brushing butterfly-soft over them. Calm threads its way through your soul, and suddenly you can dare to open your eyes, sure that it’s safe.  

He towers over you, shifting his grip on your wrists so that he’s holding your hands instead.  Your skin tingles where he’s touching you, as if you’ve applied peppermint oil, but you lose track of the sensation when you look up at his face.  It’s tender, sorrowful, concerned. He’s worried for you, more afraid for you than of you this time. It would be captivating if you weren’t fascinated by the way you see him now.  His skin felt thin to you before, but now you can see how he has to fight to keep himself contained in this body that makes sense to you. It’s not just light throbbing and shifting under his skin, it’s  _ him _ .  

“Wait,” you say, and setting his wing must have taken more out of you than you realized because your voice is raw and rough, “Your other wing.  Can I fix it?”

**_Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain._ **

The words flash off his tongue, his lips, sparks flying, characters dying out before you can commit them to memory and leaving only glowing, imprinted negatives behind.  Still, you take it for the ‘no’ it is, and you shake your head stubbornly.

“It’s still broken,” you tell him, pulling on his hands, “Please just let me set it.”

For a moment, you think he’ll continue to refuse, but then he goes to his knees in front of you and lowers his head.  It leaves you speechless to see him like this, subservient, wonder if this is how he kneels before God. You don’t let yourself linger, afraid you might lose your chance to set his wing, shake his hands off and step quickly around to his left side.  You grasp the two halves of the broken humerus on his left wing and close your eyes.

“H- **_Alleluia._ **

The four syllables sizzle on your lips, leave you gasping as the mark for it shimmers into being behind your eyelids and then fizzles out.  You pull hard, and you hear him cry out, a sound that a dying man might make. The flash of Glory comes again, but it doesn’t burn your eyes this time.  Instead, it moves through your body like a scorching wave, leaves you feeling raw, aching, but clean. There’s a sudden rush, the angel’s wing surging from your hands, and then you’re being buffeted by wind, swaying like a tree in a hurricane.

You’re surprised when it comes to a stop and you have the sense of being surrounded.  When you open your eyes, you find yourself surrounded by light, by gleaming white-gold feathers and the angel’s hands are cupping your elbows lovingly.  His wings are cupped around you and him, closing you in a soft, bright world that steals your breath away. 

**_If I go up to the Heavens, You are there; If I make my bed in the depths, You are there._ **

“Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me,” you respond, still trying to catch your breath.  Your lungs feel like they’ve been seared from the inside out, but they also feel like they’ve never been able to take air in this way before.

He smiles, dazzlingly and brilliantly, light bursting from his skin.  He lights up the night like an unclouded midday sun, shining so bright that you can’t keep your eyes open.  You squeeze them closed, and still the radiance shines through your eyelids so brightly that you can see him bending towards you.  His hands slide up to gently squeeze your shoulders and then he kisses you, his lips pressing against yours, soft and sparkling, your lips buzzing with it.

He vanishes with a silent explosion, and then all around you is dark.  You blink and breath, your heart beating a thundering tattoo in your chest as you stand alone on the sidewalk.

**Author's Note:**

> Scriptures are from Psalm 23 and Psalm 139.
> 
> Hi I love Angel Steve especially Guardian Angel Steve and especially when paired with Fallen Angel Bucky.
> 
> I'm borrowing from so many things, among them: the Correspondence from Fallen London/Sunless Sea/Sunless Skies; angels from Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, THE BIBLE OBVIOUSLY, really fast and loose from some brief readings into angelology, headcanons I got from who knows where but probably tumblr, seraphim from Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy, the Unearthly series by Cynthia Hand, and who knows what else at this point.
> 
> If you liked this please leave kudos and a comment about your favorite part!


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